In an effort to make more work for myself, apparently, I decided to try using a version of the Influence subsystem to track how "friendly" the Spire Dorm group is with the PCs. My plan is to have a running total of points that accumulate across sessions. I set the thresholds at 8 for "friends" (gets the study bonus) and 12 for "good friends" (gets the special item.) I'm doing it like this:
Every month there will be an event where they can try to gain influence. Think "Board Game Night" or "Waiting to be called for the Leshy battles" or such.
Each event will have up to four of the NPCs in attendance (semi-randomly chosen -- for example, the Board Game Night event will have a fairly specific group, etc.)
Each event will have two or three rounds that the PCs can use for either Discovery or Influence (I have five PCs, and I don't want these to take more than ten or fifteen minutes).
DCs will not change as the PCs level up -- this will represent the PCs becoming more well known to the Spire Dorm group, and vice versa. As they level up, they will naturally become more familiar with each other, and the checks will be easier.
I made up "Influence Stat Blocks" for each of the NPCs -- do you think these look reasonable?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pWXvUIMPrtZbElvvj_JAMytLDO3SN7soJ2G _YYPlxZQ/edit?usp=sharing
